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JAN  13  ]9]? 


The  Duties  of  Americans 
in  the  Present  War 


'^         OF  THE 
UNIVERSIT 

^'    'BO.-/: 


ADDRESS  DELIVERED  AT  TREMONT  TEMPLE 
SUNDAY,  JANUARY  30,  1916 


BY 

JOSIAH  ROYCE,  LL.D. 

PROFESSOR  IN 
HARVARD   UNIVERSITY 


THE  DUTIES  OF  AMERICANS  IN  THE 
PRESENT  WAR 

BY 

JOSIAH    ROYCE,  LL.D. 

PROFESSOR   IN 
HARVARD   UNIVERSITY 

I  fully  agree  with  those  who  believe  that  men  can  reason- 
ably define  their  rights  only  in  terms  of  their  duties.  I  have 
moral  rights  only  in  so  far  as  I  also  have  duties.  I  have  a  right 
to  my  life  because  it  gives  me  my  sole  opportunity  to  do  my 
duty.  I  have  a  right  to  happiness  solely  because  a  certain 
measure  of  happiness  is  needed  to  adapt  me  to  do  the  work  of 
a  man.  I  have  a  right  to  possess  some  opportunity  to  fulfil  the 
office  of  a  man;  that  is,  I  have  a  right  to  get  some  chance  to 
do  my  duty.    This  is,  in  fact,  my  sole  inalienable  right. 

This  doctrine  that  rights  and  duties  are  correlative  is  an  old 
teaching.  It  is  also  a  dry  and  somewhat  abstractly  worded  bit 
of  wisdom,  unwelcome  to  our  more  flippant  as  well  as  to  our 
more  vehement  moods,  and  of  late  unpopular.  I  am  not  here 
to  expound  it.  I  mention  it  only  because  I  rejoice  that  we 
are  here  to-day  to  consider  what  we  have  deliberately  chosen 
to  name  the  duties  of  Americans  in  the  present  war.  I  doubt 
not  that  we  Americans  have  also  our  rights  in  the  world  crisis 
through  which  we  are  passing.  I  was  glad  and  eager  to  sign 
the  recent  memorial,  addressed  to  the  President  of  the  United 
States,  and  issued  by  the  "Committee  on  American  Rights." 
But  I  signed  that  memorial  with  enthusiasm  just  because  I  be- 
lieve not  only  that  the  American  rights  in  question  are  genuine, 
but  that  they  correspond  with  our  duties  as  Americans,  and  with 
the  duty  which  our  country  now  owes  to  mankind.  It  is  of 
our  duties  that  I  now  rejoice  to  speak  to  you. 

Two  things  have  made  clear  to  many  of  us  Americans  since 
the  outset  of  the  present  war  —  and  to  some  of  us  with  a  con- 


stantly  increasing  definiteness  of  vision  —  what  our  duty  is. 
First  the  fact  that,  in  this  war,  there  is  constantly  before  our 
eyes  the  painfully  tragic  and  sublime  vision  of  one  nation  that, 
through  all  its  undeserved  and  seemingly  overwhelming  agonies, 
has  remained  unmistakably  true  to  its  duty  —  that  is,  to  its  in- 
ternational duty,  to  its  honor,  to  its  treaties,  to  the  cause,  to 
the  freedom,  and  to  the  future  union  of  mankind.  That  nation 
is  Belgium. 

In  the  heart  of  every  true  American  this  consciousness  ought 
therefore  to  be  kept  awake  (and,  in  many  of  our  minds  this  con- 
sciousness is  glowingly  and  radiantly  active  and  wakeful),  —  the 
desire,  the  longing,  the  resolution :  "Let  us,  let  our  dear  republic, 
do  our  duty  as  Belgium  and  the  Belgian  people  have  done  theirs. 
Let  us,  with  all  our  might,  with  whatever  moral  influence  we  pos- 
sess, with  our  own  honor,  with  our  lives  if  necessary,  be  ready, 
if  ever  and  whenever  the  call  comes  to  our  people,  to  sacrifice 
for  mankind  as  Belgium  has  sacrificed,  to  hazard  all  as  Bel- 
gium has  hazarded  all,  for  the  truer  union  of  mankind  and  for 
the  future  of  human  brotherhood."  That  vision  of  Belgium's 
Moble  and  unsparing  self-sacrifice  for  international  honor  is  one 
of  the  two  things  that  to-day  constantly  remind  us  of  what  in- 
ternational duty  is,  and  so  what  our  own  American  duty  is. 

The  second  thing  which  constantly  keeps  wide  awake,  in  the 
minds  of  many  of  us  here  in  America,  the  knowledge  of  what 
our  duty  is,  is  the  moral  attitude  which  has  been  deliberately 
and  openly  assumed  by  Germany  since  the  outset  of  the  war. 
This  attitude  gives  us  what  will  remain  until  the  end  of  human 
history,  one  great  classic  example  of  the  rejection,  by  a  great 
and  highly  intelligent  nation,  of  the  first  principles  of  inter- 
national morality,  —  the  rejection  of  international  duty,  the  as- 
sertion that  for  its  own  subjects,  the  State  is  the  supreme  moral 
authority,  and  that  there  is  no  moral  authority  on  earth  which 
ranks  superior  to  the  will  of  the  State. 

The  assertion  has  often  been  made  that  we  Americans  have 
believed  the  lies  of  Germany's  enemies,  and  have  thus  been 
ignorantly  and  woefully  deceived.  Countless  German  attempts 
have  been  made  to  tell  us  through  books,  pictures,  newspapers,  — 


sometimes  through  other  documents,  —  what  Germany's  real 
motives  are.  I  am  sure  that  I  speak  the  minds  of  many  of  you, 
my  countrymen  and  fellow  citizens,  when  I  say  that,  next  to  the 
vision  of  bleeding  and  devoted  Belgium,  —  that  suffering  servant 
of  the  great  community  of  mankind,  —  no  picture  more  convinc- 
ingly instructs  us  regarding  our  duty,  than  the  picture  that  comes 
before  our  minds  whenever  we  remember  Germany's  summons 
at  the  gates  of  Liege,  or  recall  von  Jagow's  answer  to  one  of 
President  Wilson's  early  Lusitania  notes,  or  when,  more  recently, 
we  read  the  first  Austrian  note  in  answer  to  President  Wilson's 
peremptory  demand  about  the  case  of  the  Ancona. 

No,  not  Germany's  enemies,  but  Germany  herself,  her  prince, 
her  ministers,  her  submarine  commanders,  have  given  us  our 
principal  picture  of  what  the  militant  Germany  of  the  moment 
is,  and  of  what  Germany  means  for  the  future  of  international 
morality.  This  picture  constitutes  the  second  of  the  two  great 
sources  of  our  instruction  about  what  our  American  duty  in  this 
war  is. 

We  are  all  accustomed  to  "look  on  this  picture,  and  then  on 
this."  The  first  of  the  two  pictures  is  now  familiar,  —  inexpres- 
sibly sad  and  dear  to  us.  Belgians  are  amongst  us  as  friends  or 
as  colleagues;  Belgian  relief  is  one  of  the  principal  good  causes 
of  American  charity.  Belgian  wrongs,  —  but  also  Belgian  heroism 
and  Belgian  unswerving  dutifulness,  —  are  before  our  eyes  as  in- 
spiring admonitions  of  what  is  the  duty  of  Americans  in  the  present 
war.  That  constitutes  the  one  picture.  The  other,  —  well,  Ger- 
many has  chosen  to  set  before  us  this  second  picture.  That,  in  its 
turn,  has  now  become  too  familiar.  But  since  our  memory  for 
diplomatic  notes  easily  and  early  begins  to  fail,  that  second 
picture  often  tends  to  fade  out  amongst  us.  And  since  we  all 
long  for  peace  to  come,  and  since  some  faint  hearts  forget  that 
it  is  as  immoral  to  make  light  of  grave  wrongs,  and  merely 
to  condone  them,  as  it  is  irrationally  to  cry  out  with  lust  of 
vengeance,  —  since  these  things  are  so,  there  are  Americans  who 
forget  the  second  picture,  and  forget  that  Germany  has  done 
as  much  as  Belgium  to  set  before  us  what  our  international 
duty,  as  individuals  and  as  a  nation,  really  is. 

4 


What  that  second  picture  means,  what  spirit  it  expresses, 
what  view  of  the  nature  of  each  nation's  obligations  to  mankind 
it  sets  before  us,  we  have  not  been  left  to  learn  from  the  enemies 
of  Germany.  The  chief  ally  of  Germany,  whose  submarine 
policy  was  ''made  in  Germany,"  and  whose  will  in  this  matter 
is  the  will  of  Germany,  lately  explained  the  matter  to  us  in 
unmistakable  terms.  I  refer  to  the  Ancona  case.  President 
Wilson  accepting,  not  any  so-called  *'lies"  of  the  enemies  of 
Germany,  but  the  official  statement  of  the  submarine  commander 
who  sank  the  Ancona  after  that  vessel  had  ceased  to  make  her 
effort  to  escape,  and  while  her  passengers  were  still  in  danger 
of  drowning  in  case  their  vessel  was  sunk,  —  President  Wilson 
addressed  to  Austria  a  note  in  which  he  plainly  and  accurately 
said  that  the  officially  reported  act  of  the  submarine  commander 
was  in  principle  barbarous  and  abhorrent  to  all  civilized  nations. 
Austria  in  its  reply  very  courteously,  ironically,  and  cynically 
thanked  our  Government  for  the  "esteemed  favor"  of  its  com- 
munication, and  expressed  its  entire  ignorance  of  what  law,  of 
what  principle  of  international  morality,  there  might  be  which 
the  submarine  commander  was  supposed,  by  the  American 
Government,  to  have  violated. 

Now  this  Austrian  reply,  —  widely  praised  by  the  inspired 
German  press  as  a  masterpiece  of  diplomatic  skill,  and  received 
with  "quiet  joy"  by  the  official  lovers  and  defenders  of  the  Ger- 
man submarine  policy,  —  was  precisely  in  the  spirit  of  Cain's 
reply  when  he  was  challenged  from  overhead  regarding  the 
results  of  his  late  unpleasantness  with  his  brother  Abel.  For 
Cain,  while  his  brother's  blood  was  crying  from  the  ground, 
received  a  somewhat  stern  diplomatic  communication  from  a 
moral  power,  demanding:  "Where  is  thy  brother?"  And  Cain  in 
substance  begged  to  acknowledge  the  esteemed  favor  of  this 
communication  from  on  high,  and  seems  at  first  to  have  taken 
a  certain  stilles  Vergniigen  in  begging  to  represent  first  that,  so 
far  as  he  knew,  he  was  not  his  brother's  keeper,  while,  for  the 
rest,  he  desired  most  respectfully,  and  in  the  friendliest  spirit, 
to  inquire  what  law  of  God  or  man  he  was  supposed  to  have 
broken. 


Now  this  is  the  spirit  of  international  immorality,  —  this  is 
the  sort  of  enmity  to  mankind,  —  which  the  German  submarine 
policy,  its  official  allies  and  defenders,  have  expressed  and  jus- 
tified. Upon  this  second  picture  then,  with  its  lurid  contrast  to 
the  picture  of  Belgium,  we  have  to  look  when  we  think  of  our 
duty  as  Americans.  For  deliberate  national  deeds  cannot  be  un- 
done, nor  can  their  official  justifications  be  lightly  condoned  by 
reason  of  later  diplomatic  trifling  and  by  reason  of  speciously 
well-written  notes  of  apology  and  withdrawal.  The  deed  stays. 
Its  official  justification  reveals  motives,  and  confesses  a  national 
spirit,  whose  moral  meaning  is  as  irrevocable  as  death.  We 
Americans  know  what  the  Lusitania  outrage  meant,  and  to  what 
spirit  it  gave  expression.  That  spirit  has  the  "primal  eldest 
curse  upon  it,  —  a  brother's  murder."  For  the  young  men,  the 
women,  the  babies,  who  went  down  with  the  Lusitania  were  our 
dead.  At  least  I  know  —  some  of  whose  pupils  were  amongst 
the  victims  of  the  Lusitania  —  that  they  were  my  dead.  And 
the  mark  of  Cain  lasts  while  Cain  lives. 

Such  facts  determine  the  duty  of  Americans  in  this  war.  Our 
duty  is  to  be  and  to  remain  the  outspoken  moral  opponents  of 
the  present  German  policy,  and  of  the  German  state,  so  long 
as  it  holds  this  present  policy,  and  carries  on  its  present  war. 
In  the  service  of  mankind,  we  owe  an  unswerving  sympathy  not 
to  one  or  another,  but  to  all  of  the  present  allied  enemies  of 
Germany.  We  owe  to  those  allies  whatever  moral  support  and 
whatever  financial  assistance  it  is  in  the  power  of  this  nation  to 
give.  As  to  munitions  of  war:  it  is  not  merely  a  so-called 
American  right  that  our  munition-makers  should  be  free  to  sell 
their  wares  to  the  enemies  of  Germany.  It  is  our  duty  to  en- 
courage them  to  do  so,  since  we  are  not  at  the  moment  in  a  posi- 
tion to  serve  mankind  by  more  direct  and  effective  means.  For 
the  violation  of  Belgium,  and  the  submarine  policy  of  Germany 
and  of  her  ally  —  a  policy  deliberately  and  boastfully  avowed 
as  long  as  the  central  powers  deemed  such  avowal  advantageous 
—  this  violation  and  this  policy  together  suffice  to  keep  clearly 
before  our  eyes  the  fact  that  Germany,  as  at  present  disposed, 
is  the  wilful  and  deliberate  enemy  of  the  human  race.     It  is 

6 


open  to  any  man  to  be  a  pro-German  who  shares  this  enmity. 
But  with  these  two  pictures  before  our  eyes,  it  is  as  impossible 
for  any  reasonable  man  to  be  in  his  heart  and  mind  neutral, 
as  it  was  for  the  good  cherubs  in  heaven  to  remain  neutral  when 
they  first  looked  out  from  their  rosy  glowing  clouds,  and  saw 
the  angels  fall.  Neutral,  in  heart  or  in  mind,  the  dutiful  Ameri- 
can, when  once  he  has  carefully  looked  upon  this  picture  and 
then  on  this,  will  not  and  cannot  be.  He  must  take  sides.  And 
if  he  takes  sides  as  I  do,  he  will  say:  ''Let  us  do  all  that  we 
as  Americans  can  do,  to  express  our  hearty,  and,  so  far  as  we 
can,  our  effective  sympathy  with  the  united  friends  of  Belgium, 
who  are  the  foes  of  those  German  enemies  of  mankind. 
Whenever  the  war  is  over,  if  it  ends  in  the  defeat  and  conse- 
quent moral  reform  of  Germany,  then  in  due  time  let  Charity 
have  its  perfect  work.  For  we  in  America  have  long  loved  and 
studied  German  civilization,  and  would  be  loving  it  still  but  for 
its  recent  crimes.  But  now,  while  the  war  lasts,  and  Belgium 
bleeds,  and  mankind  mourns,  let  us  aid  the  allied  enemies  of 
Germany  with  sympathy,  since  the  cause  of  the  allied  enemies  of 
Germany  is  the  cause  of  mankind;  let  us  enthusiastically  ap- 
prove of  supplying  the  enemies  of  Germany  with  financial  aid 
and  with  munitions  of  war,  let  us  resist  with  all  our  moral 
strength  and  influence  those  who  would  place  an  embargo  upon 
munitions,  let  us  bear  patiently  and  uncomplainingly  the  transient 
restrictions  of  our  commerce  which  the  war  entails,  let  us  be 
ashamed  of  ourselves  that  we  cannot  even  now  stand  beside 
Belgium,  and  suffer  with  her  for  our  duty  and  for  mankind,  and 
while  we  wait  for  peace  let  us  do  what  we  can  to  lift  up  the 
hearts  that  the  Germany  of  to-day  has  wantonly  chosen  to 
wound,  to  betray,  and  to  make  desolate.  Let  us  do  what  we  can 
to  bring  about  at  least  a  rupture  of  all  diplomatic  relations  be- 
tween our  own  republic  and  those  foes  of  mankind,  and  let  us 
fearlessly  await  whatever  dangers  this  our  duty  as  Americans 
may  entail  upon  us,  upon  our  land  and  upon  our  posterity.  We 
shall  not  thus  escape  suffering.  But  we  shall  begin  to  endure 
as  Belgium  to-day  endures,  for  honor,  for  duty,  for  mankind." 


CITIZENS'  LEAGUE  FOR  AMERICA  AND  THE  ALLIES 


in 


We  believe  that  the  fabric  of  civilization  embodied 
free  government  and  diversity  of  nationality  is  menaced  by 
Teutonic  aggression,  and  that  the  foundations  of  public  right 
are  endangered  by  the  violation  of  Belgium  and  the  atrocities 
of  submarine  warfare. 


We  are  convinced  that  our  political  ideals  and  our  national 
safety  are  bound  up  with  the  cause  of  the  Allies,  and  that  their 
defeat  would  mean  moral  and  material  disaster  to  our  country. 

Therefore,  this  League  is  formed  to  use  all  lawful  means 
to  put  this  Nation  in  a  position  of  definite  sympathy  with  the 
Allies,  and  in  an  equally  definite  position  of  moral  disappro- 
bation of  the  purposes  and  methods  of  the  Central  Teutonic 
Empires. 


COMMITTEE 


HoLKER  Abbott 

Rev.  W.  H.  VAN  Allen,  D.  D. 

Wm.  D.  Austin 

Caspar  G.  Bacon 

Philip  Cabot 

Richard  C.  Cabot,  M.  D. 

Stephen    Chase 

Wm.  T.  Councilman,  M.  D. 

Ralph  Adams  Cram 

Rev.  H.  R.  Deming 

James  V.  Donnaruma 

Rev.  P.  R.  Frothingham 

Henry  Copley  Greene 

Wm.  Ernest  Hocking 

Charles  C.  Jackson 


F.  F.  McLeod 
Joseph  B.  Millet 
Ralph  Barton  Perry 
Arthur  Stan  wood  Pier 
Edgar  Pierce 
Chandler  R.  Post 
Morton  Prince,  M.  D. 
George  Haven  Putnam 
JosiAH  Royce 
Alexander   Sedgwick 
Frederick  C.  Shattuck,  M.  D. 
Wm.  Roscoe  Thayer 
George  B.   Upham 
H.  Langford  Warren 
Leo  Wiener 


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WILLIAM  D.  AUSTIN 

50  Bromfield  Street,   Boston,  Mass. 


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